Whoa, went to Extreme Beerfest today, where there are 300 beers at 7% or higher. Yowza. Lots of barleywines, stouts, imperial something or others, barrel-aged something or others and otherwise crazy stuff. All the best stuff at those things ends up being at the homebrewers section, and there seem to be a number of local brewing clubs doing some pretty great stuff. One of them had a sweet potato stout that was pretty tasty. Also had some great great stuff from O'Dell's, Green Flash, Lagunitas and plenty of others. Had an imperial IPA that was 17% but unfortunately wasn't that good. Feeling pretty salmon-handed.

L & I did some hard drankin' last night as we made our way through the final five episodes of Freaks & Geeks (which I liked every bit as good as all my friends promised me I would). Started out with rusty nails made with Michael Collins Irish Whiskey. Finally killed that bottle and the Drambuie, too. Then we drained the rest of the Cutty Sark, which I'd originally bought to make the rusty nails with. Finished things off with Talisker, neat, reading Michael Jackson's tasting notes and actually making a sort of breakthrough in tasting awareness. (I've been reading through one of his guides lately and it's all finally starting to make sense to me.)

All in all, three emptied bottles and a severely depleted supply of Talisker, which makes me sad.

The narrative portion (with the background info) is actually quite readable, and then probably 2/3 to 3/4 is ratings, tasting notes, and little biographies of all the distilleries, which I find really fascinating.

There's also this one, which I may read next:

They're both published by DK, which means they're chock full of great images and maps and photos:

Camus VS cognac is about $25 - that's a really great value, and it's much, much better than Henny/Remy/Courvoisier VS, which are basically swill. I went through a lot of the Camus making punches last year. Pierre Ferrand Ambre is popular with the sleeve-garter demographic, that's like $35. Ferrand also just released 1840, which was designed particularly for the aforementioned demographic and which I hear is awesome, that's like 40-45.

A good trick is to look for armagnac instead of cognac. Armagnac is cheaper for the quality, less mass-produced, and the brasher character is very good for mixing. But, you know, my corner store doesn't have any armagnac.

Yeah I kinda doubt the sole liquor store in Oxford, OH will either. But thanks, I'll probably look for the Ferrand! And I'm glad I asked because otherwise I probably woulda just bought some Remy or Courvoisier. I've never bought a bottle of cognac in my life.